Friedman and Ignatius on Georgia

Valuable columns by Tom Friedman and David Ignatius.
Friedman concentrates on the error of Nato expansion, and the
consequent humiliation of Russia, which has now come back to bite us.

[S]ince we had finally brought down Soviet communism and
seen the birth of democracy in Russia the most important thing to do
was to help Russian democracy take root and integrate Russia into
Europe. Wasn't that why we fought the cold war -- to give young Russians
the same chance at freedom and integration with the West as young
Czechs, Georgians and Poles? Wasn't consolidating a democratic Russia
more important than bringing the Czech Navy into NATO?...

No, said the Clinton foreign policy team, we're going to cram NATO
expansion down the Russians' throats, because Moscow is weak and, by
the way, they'll get used to it. Message to Russians: We expect you to
behave like Western democrats, but we're going to treat you like you're
still the Soviet Union. The cold war is over for you, but not for us.

I don't think we fought the cold war to give young Russians freedom, actually, but put that aside.

The risks of humiliating Russia after the Wall came down were
perhaps given too little weight. The dilemma was certainly understood
by advocates of Nato enlargement, and there were attempts at outreach
through various forms of partnership between Russia and and the
alliance, though perhaps this seemed like adding insult to injury. But
bear two other points in mind. One, Nato was not enlarged all the way,
out of concern for Russia's reaction: Ukraine and Georgia have been
sort of promised membership, but with no timetable. Two, the question
was, what were we to say to Poland, Hungary, and then-Czechoslovakia,
desperate for release from Russo-Soviet imperium and for the protection
of the West? Remember also that the success of their post-socialist
transition to market economics was very much in doubt. This was a
finely balanced argument.

The real mistake, to my mind, was in taking too long to admit the
Eastern Europeans to the European Union--and that in turn owed
everything to the fact (a grave mistake in its own right) that the EU
had deepened its political integration too fast and too far. A
shallower economic union, rather than a United States of Europe in
progress, would have been able to embrace Poland and the others more
eagerly. As it was, the only fast-acting institutional support for the
East European reformers was Nato, a military alliance explicitly
created to confront the Soviet Union, and implicitly still aimed at
Russia. Friedman accuses the Clinton and Bush foreign-policy teams of
"rank short-sightedness" in all this. He makes a good point, but the
error was not as clear-cut as he says.

Ignatius focuses on John McCain's penchant for the "zinger":

McCain likes zingers. We've all seen that mischievous
look -- just before he shot a quip or sarcastic one-liner at GOP rivals
such as former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. It's one of his
appealing qualities, but in this case it worries me. Zingers don't make
good foreign policy. They embolden friends and provoke adversaries --
and in the Georgia crisis, that has proved to be a deadly combination...

So what encouraged Saakashvili to make his reckless gamble? Partly
it was the ambivalent policy of the Bush administration, which told the
Georgian leader one month that "We always fight for our friends" (as
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in July in Tbilisi about
Georgia's bid to join NATO) and the next month cautioned restraint. And
partly it was cheerleading from the pro-Georgia lobby, in which McCain
has been one of the loudest voices...

There's a moral problem with all the pro-Georgia cheerleading, which
has gotten lost in the op-ed blasts against Putin's neo-imperialism. A
recurring phenomenon of the early Cold War was that America encouraged
oppressed peoples to rise up and fight for freedom -- and then, when
things got rough, abandoned them to their fate. The CIA did that
egregiously in the early 1950s, broadcasting to the Soviet republics
and the nations of Eastern Europe that America would back their
liberation from Soviet tyranny. After the brutal suppression of the
Hungarian revolution in 1956, responsible U.S. leaders learned to be
more cautious, and more honest about the limits of American power.

Now, after the Georgia war, McCain should learn that lesson:
American leaders shouldn't make threats the country can't deliver or
promises it isn't prepared to keep. The rhetoric of confrontation may
make us feel good, but other people end up getting killed.

I think Ignatius is absolutely right about this. The empty threat is
a very bad way to conduct foreign policy. Now, recognizing this gets
you only so far. It does not tell you whether Nato enlargement--in
effect, a threat backed up with tanks--was a good idea. Does Georgia
ever join? What about Ukraine? Should Poland have been brought in?
Should Nato have been shut down altogether after the collapse of the
Soviet Union? Those hard questions don't go away. But in the meantime,
as Ignatius says, the diplomatic zinger is best avoided.